When asked to justify his equal pay for equal work act, Obama always brings up the point that women only earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. The only problem is that the figure is totally misleading, should never be used in a million years, and Obama knows it. In fact, it's so misleading that it would be fair to criticize the whole democratic process on account of it, considering that Obama has largely been able to get away with saying it.

First, we have to understand where the figure comes from. The 77 cent figure is calculated by dividing the median earnings of full-time working women by the median earnings of full-time working men. When we make a few simple adjustments to the way this is calculated, the 77 figure approaches 90 percent. First, instead of using medium annual income (which is affected by taking time off), you look at weekly earnings. This brings it up to 82.1 percent. Next, you have to adjust for actual hours worked. The 77 figure uses the vague notion of "full-time" which means anything over 35 hours per week. As it turns out, men are twice as likely to work over 40 hours a week and women are twice as likely to work 35-39 hours per week. When you look at women who work 40 hours per week, the figure jumps up to 88 percent (the figure is even higher when you compare a man and a woman working exactly 40 hours per week). So essentially the starting point is 90 percent. When you take into account the fact that women enter lower paying careers, take time off to raise children and thus don't have as much experience, and even in the same field choose lower paying specialties, the pay gap basically shrinks to around 3 percent, which could easily be accounted for without assuming there's any pay discrimination.

"These gender-disparity claims are also economically illogical. If women were paid 77 cents on the dollar, a profit-oriented firm could dramatically cut labor costs by replacing male employees with females. Progressives assume that businesses nickel-and-dime suppliers, customers, consultants, anyone with whom they come into contact"yet ignore a great opportunity to reduce wages costs by 23%. They don't ignore the opportunity because it doesn't exist. Women are not in fact paid 77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men."

http://www.wsj.com...(in order to read the article you have to copy and paste the title into google and click on the first link)

At 4/23/2015 4:12:45 PM, 16kadams wrote:I think they get 98 cents on the dollar after relevant factors are controlled for.

That means there is a 2 percent chance if you are a male that you will lose your job to a woman?

The extinction of the species is worse than the extinction of the nation, which is worse than the extinction of the tribe, which is worse than the extinction of the family, which is worse than the extinction of the individual. The second he reverses that list of priorities, he becomes a coward, and would be summarily disposed of by any civilized society that values its own survival.

At 3/27/2016 4:37:43 PM, dylancatlow wrote:A year later and candidates are still peddling it.

Welcome to democracy, the system whose only serious supporting argument is that everything else sucks more.

It's always been an exercise in confusing the concept of a "job" title with actual "work" output.

A fun political game of semantics at the expense of the public.

The extinction of the species is worse than the extinction of the nation, which is worse than the extinction of the tribe, which is worse than the extinction of the family, which is worse than the extinction of the individual. The second he reverses that list of priorities, he becomes a coward, and would be summarily disposed of by any civilized society that values its own survival.

At 4/23/2015 6:22:14 PM, ford_prefect wrote:Im not a big Obama critic, but I do wish he'd stop using this terrible sound byte. Basic Econometrics proves the 77 cents argument is pretty empty. There is no real gender pay gap

Yeah, I generally respected Obama as more or less moderately competent and intellectually honest, but my respect is severely undermined every time he quips about the '77 cents' bogus statistic.

At 4/23/2015 6:22:14 PM, ford_prefect wrote:Im not a big Obama critic, but I do wish he'd stop using this terrible sound byte. Basic Econometrics proves the 77 cents argument is pretty empty. There is no real gender pay gap

Yeah, I generally respected Obama as more or less moderately competent and intellectually honest, but my respect is severely undermined every time he quips about the '77 cents' bogus statistic.

I get the sense that he's just paying lip service to a political movement that can be miraculously solved by "correct" economic analysis.

I mean, this is literally exactly the kind of problem that politicians love: one that does not exist but gets people really engaged that Washington can, five years later, proclaim at their convenience to have remediated by some innocuous policy's or piece of legislation's impact.

At 3/28/2016 5:52:12 AM, Axonly wrote:The gender wage gap does exist, its just much more complex than it seems

In what way?

The only real study that proves a slight wage gap is the likelihood that women have the balls to ask for a raise compared to men. Other than that factor, it is clearly detrimental to men if there actually existed women willing to do the same work for 77 cents on the dollar. Men would quickly be out of work in droves in the private sector, and only safe in the public sector. The market is very, very quick to take advantage of devaluations as anyone in financial investments can tell you.

The extinction of the species is worse than the extinction of the nation, which is worse than the extinction of the tribe, which is worse than the extinction of the family, which is worse than the extinction of the individual. The second he reverses that list of priorities, he becomes a coward, and would be summarily disposed of by any civilized society that values its own survival.